It’s been a rough go of it this summer fishing in Texas. Lake Travis has once again dropped to less than 50% of its full pool, and all but one of the boat ramps was closed before July 4 weekend. The last ramp that stays open on Lake Travis is tournament point in Pace Bend State Park. The road to the ramp, and ramp itself are not the best. It’s a bit of an adventure to even get the boat in the water at this place.

It’s also been so stupid hot all summer that fishing and my tolerance for the outdoors is done by 10:00 am. That means I have to cowboy up at 4:00 am to get the boat in the water by 5:30 as to get in a decent day of fishing. To makes things even worse, the only place to buy bait was redoing their store and didn’t have their live bait back up and running,

Per the online fishing reports, fish were active in the deep marinas early in the morning, with a slow bite in 20’-30’ on jigs and Texas rigged worms off of shaded bluff later in the day. As luck would have it there is a deep marina just a quick skip away from tournament point. I made it there before first light with 5 rods rigged up with all sorts of different lures. The fish were jumping and hitting the top water like crazy all morning. I was confident I was going to limit out. I had a new electric trolling motor with a hand held controller. I threw all sorts of plastic at these bass, but got skunked for the first time in a long while. Par for the course this summer. I never got a chance to try some different colors, baits and techniques to get me a summer lake Travis black bass. Tournament point boat ramp is now closed. If I want to fish in Lake Travis now, I have to leave the boat in the shed and throw the kayak into the big water.